


in this story, you survive

by unfinishedidea



Category: Saving Face (2004)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 12:24:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8890660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfinishedidea/pseuds/unfinishedidea
Summary: She blames her ungrateful daughter.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mazily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mazily/gifts).



> Title from [in this story](http://alonesomes.tumblr.com/post/67773832136/in-this-story-your-mother-isnt-the-villain-in) by Caitlyn Siehl. mazily, thank you for requesting this fandom. I can't properly express in words how much it meant to me to write this.

Really, it’s all her daughter’s fault. _Bà_ disapproves of Lao Yu’s fortune telling, but Hwei-Lan’s willing to try almost anything at this point.

“ _Ai_ , Xiao Yu, where’s your father?” she says to get his attention; he’s reading a book intently at the checkout counter. He startles and looks up, then flushes when he sees her. 

“Sorry, _Āyí_ , he should be back soon; he just went for his morning walk.” 

Hwei-Lan sighs. “Then maybe you can help me. My daughter, Xiao Wei, you know.” She shakes her head like the suffering parent she is. “She still doesn’t have a boyfriend. I don’t even want to count how many years it’s been. She’s not getting any younger, you know?” She gives him a speculative look. “You’re not interested, are you?” she asks intently. 

Xiao Yu stammers, “Uh,” which is when Lao Yu walks in. 

“Ah, Lao Yu, good, I need your expertise for my disaster of a daughter.” At the time, she doesn’t think much of Xiao Yu excusing himself to the back, still blushing and awkwardly clutching his book. 

 

It started because of her daughter, and Hwei-Lan tells herself that she keeps going back for her daughter’s sake, too. So what if when she stops by, Lao Yu’s usually on his morning walk and Xiao Yu’s staffing the checkout counter? She certainly doesn’t feel disappointed on the days when he’s not there, working a shift at the MTA instead.

 

It’s not a particularly noteworthy day. It’s unseasonably cold, and she absently notes that the leaves are just starting to come in. Xiao Yu greets her with his usual, “Hi, _Āyí_.” 

Impulsively, she say, “ _Āiyā_ , call me Hwei-Lan, okay?” She doesn’t know what’s come over her. 

Xiao Yu flushes again. It’s not at all endearing. “ _Āyí_ ,” he says, protesting.

“You make me feel like an old woman when you call me that,” she says, nevermind that she is an old woman in his eyes. Or she should be. He doesn’t look at her like she’s an old woman, which she really should reprimand him for. She still occasionally asks him if he wants to date Xiao Wei, but it’s really just an afterthought these days, and she can’t help but feel a twinge of relief every time he declines. 

 

She doesn’t know what she was thinking, hoping that _bàba_ would never find out. _Māmā_ tsks at her and shoos her off to Xiao Wei’s, ever practical and still trying to protect her from her father the only way she knows how. _Māmā_ has never been the sentimental one, but Hwei-Lan wishes for one self-pitying moment that she was, that she’d make Hwei-Lan lie down and put her head in her lap and comb her fingers through her hair and tell her everything will be all right. It’s stupid. Weak. No point in wishing for things that will never happen. 

She’s not sure if _bàba_ will ever forgive her, and she can’t help the reflexive guilt she feels for failing as a daughter. She tried, she’s tried all her life, but it’s still never good enough. 

 

“ _Mā_ ,” her daughter says softly, one night when the credits of the latest soap opera they’ve been watching are rolling. She hmms in response. 

“Are you happy, _māmā_?” she asks, quiet but intent.

“What kind of question is that? You sound like an American.” Xiao Wei sighs, and shifts to get up. 

Later that night, when both she and Xiao Wei are pretending to sleep, she says, “I don’t know.” It’s the closest she can come to the truth. 

 

Hwei-Lan has refused to see Xiao Yu, knows that it would be futile, but sometimes Xiao Wei’s apartment feels cloying when she’s there by herself. She feels like she can’t breathe, like the ground is crumbling beneath her, like all her suffering and dutifulness was for—what? Here she is, alone and hopeless, in this empty apartment that isn’t even hers. She can’t be here for another second. She grabs her coat and walks outside, heart racing. She doesn’t even know where she’s headed. She walks into the first store she sees. It’s a candy shop. She doesn’t even like American candy, but she impulsively buys something, and heads towards the subway station. 

 

After everything, after the failed wedding and the public declarations and her strange, wonderful, frustrating, beautiful daughter forcing the truth out in that baffling American way, she feels—she feels free. She should be scared, terrified that the support system she’s had all her life is slipping away forever; her father will probably never speak to her again, and she has no husband to take care of her, and she can’t live with Xiao Wei anymore, and she should feel lost, but she just feels— 

 

The most terrifying thing she’s ever done is come here, to this foreign country with its strange people and unfamiliar smells and bizarre food. In truth, having a child out of wedlock doesn’t even compare.

 

Xiao Yu looks at her with reverence in his eyes, and it makes her uncomfortable. She doesn’t know what to do with the depth of his feelings, can’t confront the depth of her own. Li Jianheng wasn’t a terrible husband, wasn’t abusive, but he wasn’t—it wasn’t anything like an American marriage. She got married because she didn’t want to be twenty-four, people giving you sidelong glances because you were still single, no children. She didn’t want to shame her parents. 

 

She always found Americans to be strange creatures, chasing after happiness like it was something everyone could obtain and keep forever. Of course she’s had moments of happiness in her life—when Xiao Wei was born, when _bà_ was proud of her for doing something right for once—but it wasn’t a permanent state. Nevertheless, she thinks maybe she finally understands their constant yearning. She realizes one day that this must be what it feels like, this thing that she stumbled upon entirely by accident, that she’s not entirely sure what to do with, but finds herself determined not to let go of.

 

Sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night, face wet with tears. There’s a small gaping part of her that will never forgive _bàba_ for being partially responsible for the fact that she didn’t get to say goodbye to _mā_. Sometimes Xiao Yu wakes up, too; he holds her hand and lets her cry and doesn’t say anything.

 

Xiao Yu is amazing with the baby, who’s just as good as Xiao Wei was—not that Hwei-Lan ever had any doubt in her mind. She loves her fiercely. She’s grateful that she got to have this at all, never mind that it took her 48 years to get here. She doesn’t know that she deserves it. She doesn’t know how to be at peace with it, sometimes. 

When she’s upset, when she’s tired and frayed and trying to get through sleepless nights that were exhausting the first time around and are almost unbearable now, she’ll throw it in his face—how he’ll just leave, how he can’t possibly want to be with her, how could he know what he wants at that age? He just wraps her up in his arms and holds her, and she doesn’t deserve it, but she’ll take it. 

 

She’s happy for Xiao Wei, too, even though sometimes it still hurts, like a bruise she forgets she has and accidentally bumps. It hurts less as the months and years go on. She’s trying to be a better mother. She’s trying not to blame herself or her dead husband. 

 

In truth, it was before this baby, before her misadventures with Xiao Yu, before _mā_ died, when she was still telling herself that Xiao Wei was going to find a husband—before all of it—that was when she was truly lost. Sometimes she’ll say that her daughters saved her. Sometimes she’ll say that Xiao Yu did. She’ll say they dragged her, kicking and screaming, into this new life. That’s what she’ll tell people, but she knows no one else got her here. She saved herself.


End file.
